Take a Hike! Part 2

After we admired Mt. Fuji for a while, we finally packed up our tent, had some breakfast, and started on our next hike.

Whereas the hike on Day 1 was mostly up, up, up, the hike on Day 2 was mostly flat.

The first peak we stopped at was Ai-no-dake, Japan's fourth-highest mountain, just a few meters lower than Kita-dake at 3189 meters. We took our time getting to the summit, arriving at around 10:45 a.m. We had great views of Mt. Fuji most of the way over to her and also from the top, so we paused quite a bit to admire Japan's highest mountain.

After we relaxed at the summit for a while, Akinori continued on to our next campsite, whereas Eric and I took a side trip to hit up two more peaks.

It turns out that just as we passed the first peak, the very nondescript Nishi-Notori-dake (3051 meters and #16 on the list of Japan's highest mountains), Eric decided he didn't want to go on. So he turned around, hiked back to where we had left our backpacks at the last lodge that we had passed, and waited for me there.

In the meantime, I continued on by myself to the second peak, Notori-dake (3026 meters and #21 on the list), which was only about 30 minutes farther along the ridge.

Eventually, I made it back down to the lodge, bought two drinks, and found Eric. Unfortunately for Eric, he was sleeping in the sunshine, which was a big mistake, as that led to him getting a bad case of sunburn.

By the way, the lodges have a great supply of food and drinks, provided via helicopter delivery. Of course, you have to pay an arm and a leg for the supplies (e.g., a 500 ml bottle of water or a sports drink costs about 400 or 500 yen instead of the 150 that one normally pays if one's not on a mountain), but you can't beat the convenience!

I didn't realize how fatigued I was at that point until I was pouring the two 500 ml drinks I had just bought into my 1000 ml drink bottle. You see, I started with about 200 ml and ended up with about 900 ml instead of 1200 ml. How is that possible? Well, just after I poured about 300 ml worth of one of the drinks into my big bottle, I dumped it back out reaching down for the other half-liter bottle. Nice job, Yama!

We both laughed off my mistake and then took off on a kind of shortcut back to the main trail that Akinori had hiked along. And we eventually made our way to the lodge/campsite where Akinori was waiting for us.

That's where we met Toshiro, the manager of the place.

Toshiro was a riot. For example, when we asked him where he was from, this was his answer: "I'm Korean... I mean, I'm Chinese... I'm actually Vietnamese."

And the guy was so nice! He tried to repair my hiking boots, which were coming apart at the back of the soles. And he gave us some free food and drinks that night and the next morning before we took off on Day 3.

We got along so well from the moment we met Toshiro, it was as if he was our long-lost friend. I really enjoyed hanging out with him and hope to see him again some day up at his lodge.

Day 3 was the big trudge to the end.

I was fairly eager to continue down the Southern Alps chain for at least another day, but my boots probably weren't going to last much longer and Eric's sunburn was pretty bad. So we decided to stick with the plan we had made before we started the hike on Saturday morning: Two nights, three days. (Both nights, before going to bed, my legs were so tired, I wasn't sure what kind of shape I'd be in the next day. But when I woke up the next day, I felt completely refreshed and was raring to go.)

So this was our last day, and it was going to be a long one. We had to cover about 20 km! Ugh! (Had we decided to keep hiking, we would have stopped at a campsite after 15 km.)

There were two highlights that day: The first was when Eric and I saw a bunch of wild monkeys! (Akinori left the campsite at 5 a.m., whereas Eric and I left at 7 a.m., so Akinori wasn't with us at the time.)

We had driven quickly past two monkeys on the way to the bus stop on Saturday, but this time we were just sitting on the trail, taking a break, when Eric spotted a monkey up ahead, relaxing in the sunshine and having a snack. Soon, we saw some more monkeys. They kept their distance, and we weren't about to interfere with them, so I didn't get any great pictures of them, unfortunately. But it was still exciting to see them.

The second highlight was making it to the top of Shiomi-dake (3047 m or 3052 m, and #17 or #16 on the list, depending on the source). And even though the weather was so overcast that the mountain didn't live up to it's name, which means something like "Mt. See-the-Salt," i.e., "Mt. See-the-Ocean" (the only salt that I saw was the salt that I rubbed off of my forehead), I was still happy to have climbed her!

And it was also good to see Akinori again! I found him resting next to the peak's western summit. (Eric caught up to us about 20 minutes later.)

From there, it was all down, down, down. We did encounter our first bit of bad weather of the trip, not counting the gusting wind on Kita-dake and Ai-no-dake, as it started to rain in the afternoon. But all of us were prepared for that situation and kept dry for the most part. And at 7 p.m., we made it back down to about 1000 meters and the parking lot where, thankfully, Akinori's dad was waiting for us!

And thus ended my first hike in the Japanese Alps.